Chapter 17
Robin Hood's Bay was an eerie dream.
The purple cage was gone from above them and walking through had been like taking a normal step in the lawn. It was slightly brighter here, not as dark as where they'd come from. The sky was still light and the air was clear.
The village was quaint- rows of short, brick buildings of varied sizes, all with the same rusty-toned red roofs and built close together like they were holding each other back from the edge of the cliff on which they were situated. The soft crush of waves in the bay below was highly audible in the quiet. As if to welcome them, the street lights turned on as they watched in the dim evening.
There was rustling behind him and Harry turned quickly, prompting Snape, Ron and Hermione to do the same, wands raised.
"It's just us," Hawthorne whispered.
Savage was next to him, looking at them bleakly. "Not that those would have done anything," she said, looking at their wands.
They all put their wands away, sheepish. Harry snuck a look at Ron and knew they were both thinking the same thing. Could Hawthorne or Savage be the spy?
Ron then pulled his rucksack off his back and took out the marble-like Deactivators. They were a deep purple, almost black.
"I'm not sure if this means they're working," Ron said. "With other spells, they still have a bit of white in them. But suppose it's worth a go?"
He waved his wand and said "Lumos!" in a whisper. Nothing happened. "Fuck. Okay."
"Great. Let's prepare ourselves for more bad news and check if the barrier is one-way, shall we?" Savage said this and walked straight back from where her and Hawthorne had come before anyone could stop her.
She bumped into an invisible wall. Her shoulders rose and fell before she faced them again.
Hawthorne took out a piece of paper from his jean pocket. A gust of wind picked up and blew it against his chest and Harry was pettily happy for it in that second, because the dislike he'd been developing for the man since Hogwarts was deepening.
"Just up on the right there should be a street called New Road. Should take us down by the beach, the only hotel in town is there," Hawthorne said, putting the map away and leading the way.
"The beach. Excellent," Ron said.
"What's wrong with the beach?"
"I can see the headline now- 'Auror drowned by muggle zombies.'"
"Your moment in the spotlight, at last," Snape said.
Harry grimaced- it seemed Snape was making it his mission to ensure Ron's contempt.
"Fuck you," Ron shot back.
Snape stopped in his tracks, twisting on the spot and grabbed Ron by the collar.
Harry caught Hermione, who stopped to separate them, and forced her to keep walking, motioning for Hawthorne and Savage to do the same. "Just let them kill each other. It's too cold to stop."
"Ronald never does know which battles to choose, does he?" Hermione muttered next to him.
Neither did Snape, apparently.
Harry didn't bother looking back behind them but heard a short scuffle and then steady footsteps behind them in time. He was glad no more conversation or interference needed to pass between them- the less Hawthrone and Savage divined about their relationships, the better. Before that day, Harry wouldn't have particularly cared if Savage and Hawthorne figured out the truth about him and Snape or the source of the animosity between Snape and Ron but the possibility one or both of them was spying was daunting. If they knew the truth and the killer came to know the truth, would they use it against him? What if they threatened Snape or used them to bait each other? The possibilities were unbearable.
The road that led down to the beach was long and steep, and the wind was relentless. The dark came quickly. It was easily the worst lit street in their vicinity and they couldn't see very far ahead of them. Harry kept his hand on his gun under his jacket, though he'd no idea if he could really use it when the time came.
"We're expecting the killer to react pretty quickly to Harry's arrival, so it's two to a room tonight and sleep in shifts," Savage said, sniffing.
Harry hoped that Ron and Severus would keep their mouths shut and they did.
They didn't come across anyone the whole way and right when the road flattened, the Bay Hotel was straight to their left. As they filed into the rickety, tavern-like structure, the warmth inside was fast and satisfying.
It smelled close, like the inside of a ship's hold and sea water. They piled into the lobby and the first thing to greet them was a young man at the front desk sitting in front of a wall of keys.
He was crying.
He had tight black curls and tan skin. His eyes were deep brown, almost black. He was muscular, his shirt tight, white, and clean. He had a name tag pinned to his chiseled chest that said "Roger". In short, he seemed to be the least likely sort of person to be crying in public.
"Hello," he said, smiling formally through his tears, as if they couldn't see them. "Welcome to the Bay Hotel. My name is Roger. How can I be of service?"
None of them moved.
"Are you alright?" Harry asked. He heard Ron mutter in disbelief behind him and Harry nudged his elbow back into him.
"Yes, yes, I'm okay," the young man said, and then sobbed harder. "Do you-" he choked on his own voice, "do you have a reservation?" And then he rose smoothly from his chair.
They collectively took a step back, Severus and Hermione positioning themselves in front of Harry and the rest tightening around him. He felt like he was suffocating and could barely see the young man over this human barricade.
But he could just make out Roger searching behind him for something and felt everyone around him reach for their holsters.
And then the young man slammed down a ledger book in front of him. He wiped his tears and opened it, rummaging under the counter presumably for a pen. His face was still contorted, the threat of more tears to come clear as day, and his words completely out of harmony with his demeanor. "We have loads of empty beds tonight, you can take your pick. Rooms with sea views and village views. That's rare, that."
Everyone kept very still. None of them seemed sure what to do and Savage leaned back to pass a message over her own shoulder without taking her eyes off of Roger.
"What should we do?" she whispered.
"Unless we want to camp out in the freezing cold, we take the risk, get rooms, and regroup upstairs," Harry said.
Savage nodded, obviously clearing the concern from her face. Harry was reminded, then, how early it was in her Auror career.
Her and Hawthorne braved ahead first for a room assignment, as if in a rush to get it over with. Harry heard Savage try again to ask the lobby boy what was wrong again but to no end. Hawthorne paid in cash for all their rooms. After this passed with no incident, Harry relaxed slightly as Ron and Hermione took their turn to sign their names and get keys.
As they all waited for Harry and Severus to do the same, they stood near a large staircase, past which was a common room with windows darkened from facing the sea.
Severus took the pen to write their names in the ledger.
"We hope you enjoy your stay," Roger said, holding out the keys for Harry to take.
As Harry reached out, Roger's hand clamped on his like a trapdoor snapping shut. The keys fell on the counter between them. He clasped Harry's forearm painfully, pulling him forcibly close to him across the counter.
Their faces were centimeters apart.
"Oi!" Ron yelled.
A knife appeared just below the young man's chin and Harry recognized it as Snape's. He used his free hand to put it over Snape's wrist, beginning to implore him not to use it when he heard the cock of a gun. Ron was on his other side, ready to shoot.
"Don't," Harry said. He felt strangely calm in Roger's grip. There was something strangely disarming about him.
"Let go of him," Snape said, pressing the knife closer into Roger's skin.
Harry was not trying to get out Roger's grip, held still by his hapless gaze.
"Help us," Roger whispered.
Harry thought he might have been the only one who could hear it over the commotion. Roger let go, his hands up, eyes darting to Snape's knife. In the sudden absence of tension, Harry tumbled back with the momentum, his head knocking against Ron's shoulder behind him and dislodging his glasses from his ears.
Ron approached the counter again, yelling "What are you playing at?" Harry picked up his glasses from the floor and set them right on his face.
"I'm sorry," Roger said, suddenly listless. "We hope you have a nice stay," he repeated. He put the ledger away and went about his business as if none of them were there.
They were all very still for a moment. Then Snape put his knife away, took the room key from the counter, and led the way up the stairs. Harry and Ron took up the back, because it was a minute before Harry could take his eyes off of Roger and follow the rest. Ron stayed to pull him on.
They stopped all together on the third floor. Snape used the key to open the room at the end of the corridor and they gathered in it without speaking.
Everything in the room was wooden. The bed frame, the desk, the chair, the vaulted ceiling above them, and there was the same damp smell about the place as in the lobby.
"It's a full bed," Ron said. "Instead of two singles. He gave you a room with one bed."
"We're sleeping in turns." Snape's voice could cut ice. Harry couldn't believe Ron but was still thinking too much about the lobby boy to do anything but look at him like he was crazy.
Snape stood by the window and the rest of them made a sort of semi-circle around the foot of the bed.
"What did he say to you?" Snape asked.
Harry dropped onto the bed and took off his rucksack. "He said 'help us.' That's the same way Rebecca Rickton looked," Harry said. "She looked like she wanted to say 'help me' but couldn't, like her body was doing things she couldn't understand and she was trapped in it and it was showing."
"I don't think Ron was far off, when he called them muggle zombies," Hermione said.
"I had a thought," Snape said, "a suspicion when I saw Rickton's footage. I didn't know enough so I didn't say anything. But now, it seems worth the conjecture. It could be a potion, an experimental one that fell out of the literature quickly after it was introduced by its maker, Peter Saunt. He called it Peter's Palsy."
"And you're just telling us this now?" Ron asked.
Hermione smacked his arm. "Ron! Shut up!"
"Yes, leave the questions to Granger, Weasely. You've been depending on her intelligence your entire life, no need to stop now."
Harry screwed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose under his glasses.
Ron leaned into step toward Snape and Hermione grabbed him by the arm. "You're gonna say one thing too much, one day," Ron said, low.
Snape took a deep breath. "When I do, you just make sure to give me your second best."
Harry dropped, laying back on the bed, too tired to intercede.
"Oi!" Hawthorne yelled, coming to pull Ron back from attacking Snape. Harry could see Snape upside down from his position on the bed. He was laughing at Ron's outburst.
Hawthorne forced Ron to sit on the bed and then sat next to him, the weight dipping the bed on Harry's left.
"As you were saying, Professor," Savage said and her tone almost dared to bear the annoyance Harry knew she was feeling.
Snape's eyes flickered from her to Hawthorne. "I was unsure about the Palsy theory- it seemed too unlikely. Its effects and manifestations are not very well documented, so it was hard to be sure from Rickton's footage and secondhand accounts."
Ron wrenched himself free from Hawthorne and sat next to Harry, scowling.
Snape went on. "It's an obscure bit of potion making that besides being extremely dark, is very volatile because Saunt never published the brewing instructions past it's experimental form, which already had defects and failed to accomplish it's complete purpose because it's behaviorally detectable. No one picked up where Saunt left off because even if it did work correctly, a potion was a cumbersome alternative to more convenient spells that achieve the same end, like the Imperius. That young man crying- that's his true nature manifesting. That's not by design, it's a fault that Peter Saunt never corrected on the record. It looks like Roger's been under the potion long enough to start learning his way around it, which is why he managed to ask Potter to help them- managed to say something other than what he's been directed to say."
Harry rose from his prone position in excited realization.
"Why do you sound so bloody happy about this?" Ron said, bitterly Snape's captive audience.
Snape smiled but Hermione answered for him. "Because this means potions work. Potions work under magik mortus."
"Precisely."
Silence followed and Hermione broke it again.
"Is the brewing protocol such that the killer could produce this on a large scale?"
"Could he have enough to have fed the entire muggle population of a town? Yes. Yes, he could have. Especially if had access to some experimental store kept by the ministry for reverse brewing purposes and didn't even need to brew it himself."
"Like from the Department of Mysteries," Ron said.
"How does he have control over them? Like how does he tell them what to do? With his mind or something?" Harry said.
"No, not 'with his mind or something,'" Snape said, snide. Harry wanted to punch him. Why was he catching Ron's strays? "It's a double brew. The controller has to drink a separate potion and the controlled is fed another."
"So, we're trapped here, in a coastal town literally in the middle of nowhere with some zombie muggles that could be ordered to kill us at any moment."
"Yes."
"All we can do is hope that he wants to make more of a show of killing us and then he'll have to come out of his hole to do that, won't he?" Hawthorne said. He was looking at Snape with a barely perceptible look of hope.
"Yes," Snape said again.
Ron laughed in disbelief. Hermione sat down on the bed on Harry's other side.
Hawthorne didn't seem phased. He took off his rucksack and rummaged inside. He took out lumps of something wrapped in aluminum foil and tossed one to each person in the room. "Sandwiches," he announced.
Him and Savage immediately began unwrapping theirs and eating. Hermione looked at Harry, her eyes slightly wide, Ron cleared his throat and said something about having it later and Snape set his aside on the window sill like it was a turd.
Hawthorne's chomping filled the room and then he laughed. "What? Are me and Savage the only ones starving?"
Snape folded his hands and Harry started unzipping his jacket and taking off his shoes to avoid looking at Hawthorne directly.
"Merlin's beard-" Hawthorne took a last swallow and looked around at all of them pointedly, "Do you- do you think we're the spies?"
"That is not on," Savage said, bewildered and putting her sandwich down.
Hermione, Ron, Snape, and Harry all looked at each other.
"Your food's," Hermione said, feebly nodding at them, "wrapped in a different color foil than ours."
Hawthorne laughed again, covering the rest of his sandwich with said foil. "Come on, are you serious? That's not on purpose- do you really think if we were spies, we would be that obvious?"
"We have trust issues," Harry said. "It's not personal."
"Professor, you're a master Legilmens, are you not? You could read us," Savage suggested.
"And you could use Occlumency. Besides, I can't read here. It's blocked."
Harry wondered why Snape was lying. He remembered his message to him in the car- knowing the knife was on Snape's ankle.
"Alright," Hawthorne said, putting his sandwich in his rucksack. "I'll eat Ron's and show you." He grabbed Ron's sandwich.
"The fuck you will, grab someone else's," Ron said, suddenly protective of his parcel.
Harry tossed Hawthorne his.
He unwrapped it and took a bite. "There, see, all right?" he said, chewing. "Bloody psychos. See you in the morning." He dropped the rest of it on the bed and rose to leave. Savage picked up after him.
They all waited to hear the shuffling outside finish before they spoke.
"It doesn't even prove anything," Ron said, looking at Harry's sandwich dejectedly with his realization.
"No," Harry said. "Well it proves it's not poison, but still it could be Peter's Palsy."
"We'll have to wait till the morning to eat, then," Hermione said. "Find a market."
"What if all the food's poisoned with it? What if that's how he got everyone under control?"
"We don't know if everyone is. And even if they are, he might have a lot but he can't have that much. It's unlikely."
"Starvation added to the list of ways we can die," Ron said.
"Don't be dramatic," Hermione said, running her hand through his hair. "Let's go get some rest."
Ron stiffened, but rose to leave and nodded a goodbye to Harry.
When the door closed after them, Harry asked, "Do you always try to be a dickhead in decent company?"
Snape began removing his coat. "Perhaps we have different definitions. Keep your boots on," he said.
Harry obeyed and put his boots back on. It was good thinking. They had to be ready at any moment to run out of there with nothing but a faint hope that some miracle was still possible.
Harry went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash what he could of his face. He was covered in cuts and bruises but didn't feel it. Around his neck were deep, purpling marks. He lifted his shirt to see his front was mostly unscratched but his back was burned and scrapped from being dragged against tar and glass. He turned the light off and came out to find that Snape had taken the desk chair and propped it against the door and the knob to bolt it.
He looked around for Snape and saw him sitting on the floor, legs crossed. He had his gun on his knee.
"You look like a guardian angel," Harry said. "All dressed in black."
"Please don't say things like that. And put out the light. You sleep first."
He pressed the off switch by the door and walked blindly to the bed. When he felt the edge of it with his leg, he got on his knees and climbed to the top. Then he saw past the headboard, out the window. The night sky was bright with stars compared to the deep blackness that was the sea and those were the only two things visible.
He settled down, grabbing his coat from the end where he remembered he'd left it, using it as a blanket. Getting under the covers seemed too vulnerable. He took the gun from his holster and laid it on his stomach. His back ached against the bed.
"This is probably a really nice place to come on holiday," he said, staring unseeingly at the ceiling.
"Go to sleep." Snape's voice was gentle, not like it'd been with the others.
"It was like that during the war. With Ron and Hermione, we were always hiding out and having a horrible, shit time in places that people normally holiday in."
"Did Weasley ever try to come onto you?"
Harry laughed. "What?" The beams in the ceiling were becoming visible as his eyes adjusted to the dark.
"It would explain why he nearly had a conniption when he saw the one bed."
"He's just protective. And really weird about sex. Conservative. I don't know why, but he's always been that way."
"It's not his business."
"Of course it's not, but I think he feels like I'm his brother and he doesn't like the idea of you defiling me. He was the same with Ginny."
"He's the one defiling you, in his mind. He probably has filthy thoughts about you."
Harry laughed again. "You're mad. By that standard, he has filthy thoughts about his sister."
"Maybe he does," Severus said, silky, making a show, with his voice, of spilling poison into Harry's ear. "Afterall, isn't that where 'protectiveness' really comes from? An incestuous complex?"
"Wait." Something occurred to Harry, something that made him roll onto his stomach and get on his elbows at attention. "You're not reading him, are you?"
"No."
"Why not?" Harry said, suspicious.
"It's painful, to be in his head. I've always avoided it."
Harry's offense on Ron's behalf was waved away in favor of a more pressing thought. "Why did you lie about not being able to do Legilimency here?"
"It's not totally a lie. You couldn't do it if you had to cast a spell. But if you have some innate talent, you can try."
"Can you read Hawthorne? Do you think he's the spy?"
"He's not easy to make eye contact with, which could be deliberate. But I caught him a bit just now and I think he's clear. Can't be sure yet."
"Are you attracted to him?"
"Who?"
"Hawthorne. Who else could I be talking about?"
"Why are you thinking about that? Are you attracted to him?"
"No," Harry said. "Don't turn this on me. I asked you."
"I haven't thought about it."
"You don't have to think about it. It's attraction. It's either there or it's not."
"Regardless, I haven't thought about it."
Harry hesitated. "Has- has he thought about it?"
Snape was quiet for a moment. "There was something of that, in his mind."
Harry wished he hadn't thought to ask. He hated it. He felt his insides were gaping and if Snape didn't act fast and say something that would fill up the hole inside him, it would devastate him. But he couldn't depend on Snape to say the comforting thing.
He licked his lips and rolled over on his side, with his back to Snape.
"Does that upset you?"
"Good read," Harry said.
"I don't know what to say."
"Best to not say anything then, and let me go to sleep."
What would they both look like, then, if someone burst open the door suddenly and their faces were caught in the light?
"It's ridiculous for you to feel the way you're feeling," Snape said, as if declaring an objective truth.
"Okay, thanks, I'm all better now."
Was it Harry's imagination or was Severus breathing faster?
'Tell me what to say," Severus said, "Tell me what to say and I'll say it."
"I'm not interested in you just-"
"Tell me what to say," he repeated over Harry, "and I'll say it if it's true."
Harry turned back over to face him.
"Tell me you're not interested in fucking Hawthorne."
"I'm not interested in fucking Hawthorne."
"Tell me if he came onto you, you'd think of me. You'd think of me and it would ruin it somehow and stop you from taking your clothes off with him." Harry fought the urge to keep talking, keep adding to this imaginary nightmare scenario so the question wouldn't end and he wouldn't have to hear the answer.
Snape moved slightly, shifting his fingers on the gun.
"I'd think of you."
Do you love me? He opened his mouth to say the words, but they stuck in his throat.
So he said something else instead. "Would you tell me what you really want, right now? What would really make you happy if you could do it?"
"I don't think anything would make me happy, as such. However, I'd very much like to not die like this."
"Oh yeah?"
"In some maniac's muggle torture womb. Huddled in the dark with a gun I don't know how to use and a useless wand."
"I don't want you to die protecting me."
"It's not up to you," Snape said. "It's not even up to me, anymore."
Harry thought he knew what Snape meant by that.
"It's for her, isn't it? Always." Harry held his breath.
"If I die here, it'd be for you."
"For her sake," Harry insisted.
Then they were kissing. Harry didn't understand who'd started it, who made it happen. He just felt the cool metal of Snape's gun against his face and a hand over his ear and a sweet taste in his mouth, a flavor that seemed like it could only come about as an ending.
Then Snape was at attention again, standing and facing the door as if he expected someone to burst through and punish him for this lapse.
He walked to the foot of the bed, sitting down with his back to Harry and facing the door, his frame obscuring it from Harry's view.
"Do you remember that day you testified in defense of me in front of the Wizengamot?"
Harry remembered.
"I was there. I knew you were coming and I wanted to avoid an awkward meeting so I… made sure I wasn't seen."
Harry didn't want to say anything but he felt like Snape was waiting for verbal confirmation. "Okay."
"I'd never watched you like that, without the Occlumency. You surprised me. You were so self-conscious. Not in an obvious way. Just so."
"Was I?"
"It was irrational. Because you'd just defeated the greatest dark wizard of the century and the world was puddy in your hands and you said exactly the right thing. And you were- are- hauntingly beautiful."
Then it was quiet and Harry held on to it instead of saying what he thought, which was that it couldn't be good to be hauntingly beautiful. Snape was floating down slowly to a point, he could see it, the way a particle of dust rides the air, and he couldn't move or speak for fear of changing its direction with the force of an errant breath.
"It was easy to understand how you made Dumbledore weak with love. I remember thinking that. That you could take a dark, sad person and stir something in them again. And then in the space of another moment, I felt-" he paused, "abject desire. And then directly after that, alarm. Not alarm at wanting you, although that certainly warranted alarm, but a prophetic dread."
"I didn't think you could feel things," Harry blurted, partly because he felt like he was dreaming and he needed the sound of his voice to make this true, and partly because although it wasn't exactly what he meant, he didn't know how to say what he meant.
"The thing comes in the waves, sometimes," Snape said, his voice docile. "My point is, it takes a herculean effort on my part to be with you."
"How romantic."
"I look at you and I get this sense of never having enough. I don't want to feel that. I don't want the jealousy, the pain, the hope."
Harry's whole body tensed.
"I'm not running from you and can't you see that that's the ultimate sacrifice? I do worse than die for you. I meet myself for you."
Then they listened to each other breathe.
"Why are you telling me this now? Are you so convinced we'll die?"
He saw the shape of Severus's head turn down. "I just wanted you to know."
"I love you," Harry said, closing his eyes as he surrendered those words to the dark.
"I love you," Severus said.
Harry laughed, relieved, soaring. "It's not a competition." He put a boot on either side of Severus, pressing his ankles inward.
Then a television came alive. Its flash of light and booming audio shot them both out of bed. The whole room was lit and the sound overwhelmed.
They both held their guns at the TV.
"Ladies and gentleman, you may know her from any of the umpteen blockbusters she's starred in just over the course of a year, including but not limited to Waiting for Midnight and Americana, put your hands together for Rebecca Rickton!"
"What did you do?" Snape said over his shoulder. The TV was so loud that Harry barely heard him, and the sight of Rebecca on another screen aside from the one depicting her death arrested him. She was walking, impossibly elegant, to her seat on stage, which was opposite a much more normal looking talk show host.
"Potter!" Snape yelled, voice still muffled by the blare. "What did you do?"
"Nothing," Harry said softly, transfixed.
"You must have pressed something!"
"I didn't!"
"Turn it off!"
"I didn't turn it on!"
"Well then unplug it!"
He looked around the room briefly in hopes that his eyes would land on the remote, but the television was blaring and every second felt like they were siren calling their location to everyone within a 5 kilometer radius and though the television illuminated the entire room, a remote was nowhere in sight. He rushed to the television and looked behind it for the cord. It was on top of a wardrobe and the wire went from the back of the TV to the dark depths of the thin gap between the wall and the furniture.
"Oh for fuck's sake." Harry got on his knees, pushing the wardrobe away from the wall, and slid his arm back behind it blindly, searching for the cord. He found it and pulled hard, in the corner of his eye catching a little spark of blue when the prongs left the wall.
They were plunged into a deep silence and darkness again. Harry expected Ron and Hermione to be banging at their door, demanding to know what was going on, but there was nothing.
Harry was still blinded in the sudden darkness but as his vision came to, he could make out Snape standing alert with the gun still raised, his eyes trained to the crack of the door where the floor of the lit corridor was visible.
When his ears stopped ringing, he could hear his own breathing. He was still on the floor. "What is it?"
Snape put a finger to his own lips and then pointed to the door.
Harry looked to his side and could just make out the profile of two feet behind the entrance to their room, visible through the gap.
There was someone waiting for them to open it.
Harry looked back at Snape. Snape looked at him back and nodded his head over his shoulder, like he wanted Harry to get behind him.
Harry looked away and at the door. The feet were unmoving. He took a few breaths and made eye contact with Snape again. He shook his head no.
He could almost feel the anger radiate from Snape. But an unexplainable instinct told him to stay very still, to not make a noise. He put both hands up to Snape, mouthing, "Wait," although he didn't think that was visible in the dark.
Either way, they waited.
Minutes began to pass. Neither of them moved an inch, though Harry's thoughts felt so loud and obvious, he was worried they would somehow trigger a reaction from their threat. He also feared Snape, that he wouldn't listen to him, that he'd go for the kill.
The floor creaked with movement.
Snape shifted the gun in his hand, as if to cock it.
Harry shook his head vigorously and held his hands out.
And then the figure behind the door began to shift. They listened as its weight made the floor groan after it down the corridor and then the steps.
Snape was still pointing his gun at the door. Harry took the opportunity to move and shifted his own gun to a usable position in his hand.
Snape moved to sit next to him, the chair propping the door closed between them. Harry turned and could see Snape's head as close to the door as he could get with the chair in the way, listening.
"What are you doing?"
"Shush."
Harry laid his head against the wall and waited.
"Why didn't you listen?" Snape whispered-yelled.
"I just saved us!" Harry whispered back.
"I cannot tolerate this. If you're going to disobey orders at every turn-"
"Who put you in charge? You know what I thought as I was doing that? I thought I was going a Snape route about doing things. Listen. Wait. The longer we're here and we avoid a showdown, the more we learn, the more time we have to think. The more we know, the bigger the chance we have at actually getting out of this place. I thought that's what you'd want to do. Not pick a fight the moment the opportunity showed itself."
Snape said nothing.
"You were always telling me to think- 'Use your head, Potter!'"
Snape still said nothing.
"I was just keeping my head down and now you're the irrational-"
"Message. Received." Snape interrupted.
Harry smirked.
"Shut up. And go to sleep."
Harry scoffed. "How can I sleep in this place?"
"Trust me."